Please, Labor, can we have real politics again?

April 20 2003

If the ALP ever gets around to acknowledging that it made basic mistakes during its longest period in office, we might have real politics again, writes Ray Cassin.

What will will Australia's next election be about? If we believe those who expect the Howard Government to seek a double dissolution before the present Parliament completes its term, it will be yet another campaign aimed at manipulating security fears. On this view, Australia's association with the US victory in Iraq would be the Government's trump card, intended to contrast with Labor's support for an allegedly discredited United Nations. (Though Simon Crean's disintegrating authority within his party would presumably get more than a mention in the Government's campaign, too.)

I have no idea whether John Howard wants an early election or not, but using a double dissolution to exploit Labor's difficulties would not be without risk for the Government. In a double dissolution, the quota for election to the Senate is lower, making the election of minor-party or independent candidates more likely. The Prime Minister may well calculate that, enticing though the prospect of reducing Labor to a rump in the House might be, it would not be worth a result that meant having to negotiate legislation with a gaggle of Greens in the Senate.

The question of when we will vote, however, is much less important than the question of what we will vote about. And, whether or not the Parliament is allowed to serve out its term, it is a fair bet that the Coalition will somehow introduce security questions into the campaign. One of the consequences of the never-ending war against an abstract noun that George Bush declared after September 11, 2001, and which the Australian Government rushed to sign up for, has been a creeping militarisation of democratic politics. Whatever threat global terrorist networks such as al Qaeda actually pose, the fear of them is very convenient for governments wishing to maintain the present political consensus. If you can keep voters' minds focused on shadowy external threats, you might keep them off domestic discontents.

It has been a recurrent theme in Undercurrents that the virtual unity of the major parties on broad economic policy has been corrosive of democracy, because the substantive questions that once generated mainstream political debate, especially the just distribution of wealth, are now routinely evaded. Two decades of economic rationalism have shrunk the public realm, not only in the literal sense that market mechanisms have steadily displaced government regulation, but in a rhetorical sense, too. As we have grown accustomed to the idea that goals such as "efficiency" - defined in question-begging fashion to mean outcomes determined by markets - can set aside a concern for equity, so also has our shared political discourse, our sense of what politics ought to be about, diminished too.

It is not that the ideal of distributive justice has vanished, of course. The ACTU invokes it in arguing the minimum-wage case, churches and welfare advocacy organisations do so constantly by reminding us that economic growth has not abolished poverty, and redistributive ideas even still find a place in the agendas of minor political parties such as the Democrats and the Greens. But to pursue such an agenda has become a minor-party luxury; in the eyes of the parties that can aspire to govern, questioning the economic-rationalist consensus is typically considered irresponsible at the very least, and probably courting electoral suicide as well.");document.write("

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Irresponsible? By the reasoning of the faceless directors of international credit-ratings agencies, perhaps. But electoral suicide? In so far as there is reliable evidence of what ordinary voters think about two decades of "restructuring", it is that they still expect governments to do things. The discourse of politics that has diminished is that of the political class: politicians themselves, some academics and journalists, lobbyists for big business, and public-service mandarins. But, outside the halls of power, life is much more complicated. Ideals that were once the bedrock of Australian politics, such as egalitarianism, have taken a battering but have not been extinguished.

An account of the extent of the battering can be found in The Experience of Middle Australia: The Dark Side of Economic Reform, by Michael Pusey, the sociologist whose earlier Economic Rationalism in Canberra traced the rise of the doctrine among the mandarins. Pusey's new book, published this month, is based on extensive focus-group interviews with Australians of various income levels. They differ in their attitudes to economic reform, as might be expected. Some are reconciled to it, some are resentful; the pervasive response, however, is one of anxiety. The hollowing out of the middle class - the condition that most people in Western democracies could once comfortably claim - caused by the retreat of the state has not enhanced most people's sense of well-being, in either a material or any other sense. The richest Australians are getting ever richer, and the poorest are slightly better off than they used to be, because welfare is now more tightly targeted. In between lies a chasm.

What continues to defy explanation is that the party in which egalitarian ideals were once strongest, the ALP, became the midwife to all this during the Hawke-Keating years. The natural allies of the Coalition have something to gain from keeping middle Australia in a state of chronic anxiety, but what's in it for Labor? If the party ever gets around to acknowledging that it made basic mistakes during its longest period in office, we might have real politics again. Otherwise, the next election will probably usher in three more years of being told to be alert but not alarmed.